


The Fourth Day

by sass_bot



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied Relationships, Murder Mystery, No Romance, Warden is the Inquisitor (AU)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 14:50:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sass_bot/pseuds/sass_bot
Summary: When tragedy befalls Skyhold one snowy night, it’s up to Varric and Cole to find out who the culprit is—that is, if they can stop them from killing again…





	1. Chapter 1

**3 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon  
**

**Skyhold – Foyer**

**21:30**

* * *

It’s a dark and stormy night—one of Varric’s favorite clichés. Skyhold castle is snowed in, leaving Inquisitor Surana and her inner circle trapped within. Of course, being trapped isn’t all so bad when you’re with good company. It’s still damn cold though.

With Corypheus finally dead—_for good this time_—the Inquisition has sent away all of their agents and supporters for some much needed vacations. Skyhold is a ghost town with only about a dozen people, including Charter, Sister Nightingale’s right hand woman, residing there. The only person missing from the Inquisitor’s inner circle is Madame De Fer—or rather Divine Victoria I, as they’re calling her now.

Oh, and that apostate, Solas. But wherever that guy is, he’d better stay there for his own safety, because Varric is pretty sure the Inquisitor isn’t above cold-blooded murder.

Varric leans back in his seat, laying his cards on the table, much to the frustration of the Iron Bull, Dorian Pavus, Sera, and Blackwall, who all hesitantly push their sovereigns across the table towards Varric. They have a sixth player in Cole, who isn’t really playing so much as gazing at the pictures and socializing with the people painted onto the cards—or whatever he does when he zones out. Occasionally, he’d pass piles of pebbles across the table to whoever happened to be winning.

“Sorry, boys,” Varric says, smirking from ear to ear. “This game’s mine.”

“Yes, as was the last game and the game before it,” Dorian says mockingly. “Soon enough, you’ll be the new head of House Pavus.”

Blackwall merely grumbles something incoherent in agreement.

Varric’s eye catches two figures just beyond Bull’s giant head—one tall and broad, the other small and lean. Inquisitor Anya Surana’s long coils of hair move exaggeratedly around her as she scolds Cullen, who looks like a giant defeated loaf of bread.

Varric’s group may be sitting by the fireplace, but Anya’s voice carries across the entire foyer. “Vhenan, I’m sorry. Not tonight,” she says, her arms firmly crossed over her chest.

Cullen rubs the back of his neck and sighs. “You said we would talk about things together. That we wouldn’t hide things. Not anymore. Please just let me in.”

Anya steps back, distancing herself from him. “And I said ‘No’. I can’t talk about it with you. I’m going to go to bed now. Alone.” She turns away from him and leans into the doorway to the Inquisitor’s wing. “Good night, Cullen.” With that, she passes through the door and slams it behind her.

“I wonder what that was all about,” Dorian gushes quietly. He has the look of a wide eyed peasant girl who is about to tell her entire squad about the affair the neighbor kid is having with the family goat.

Sera blows a loud raspberry. “Cully Wully’s in trouble wubble.” She struggles to even get the sentence out between fits of giggles.

Cole’s face is hidden by the wide brim of his hat as he looks down thoughtfully. “He looks hurt.”

Bull is the first to turn around, long hairy arm dangling off the back of his seat, and call out, “Hey! Commander! Come play a round with us while the night is young!”

Cullen looks startled, like he’d completely forgotten that his lover’s spat had had a captivated audience, and his face turns a bright shade of scarlet. “I… Erm… Thank you—for the invitation. But I promised Leliana I would join her and the ladies for drinks at the inn.”

“You’re gonna go out in that storm? Brave man.” Dorian remarks with a chuckle.

Bull simply shrugs and scoffs. “Suit yourself. But make sure you remind Leliana that she owes me five sovereigns. She’ll know why.”

It’s when Cullen is safely through the grand hall’s doors and out of earshot that Varric leans in with a knowing smile and says, “They’re going to eat him alive.”

Sera lazily stretches her neck out and leans back so she can rest her feet on the table (garnering an irritated “_Really_, Sera?” from Dorian). “It’s his funeral,” she replies.

“Anyone up for another round?” Blackwall cuts in, trying to spare the absent Commander the group’s ridicule.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not giving Varric any more of my money.”

“Drinks then?” the Iron Bull suggests, wiggling his eyebrows. “I happen to know exactly where Nightingale keeps all her ale.”

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold – Varric’s Chambers**

**7:00**

* * *

Varric wakes up abruptly, wincing when the sensation of knives piercing his temples overwhelms him. He groans softly, deeply regretting the weird qunari ale that the Iron Bull had pressured him to try.

He feels a faint presence at his side and turns around in bed, only to find the armchair beside his bed occupied by young Cole. The boy is curled up in a tight ball, covered in a heavy druffalo-skin blanket, and snoring lightly. The sight is so heartwarming that it almost chases away his headache… Almost.

Groggily, he slips out of bed, careful not to rouse Cole, and makes his way over to the dresser. He sighs with relief when he finds a pitcher of water and a glass, which must have been placed there the night before by Cole, because Varric knows that his drunk self would never have been able to plan as far ahead as the next morning’s hangover.

Maker bless that kid; he doesn’t know what he did to deserve such a thoughtful companion. Things have been difficult since Hawke passed away—oftentimes, Varric has felt like he’s been unceremoniously plucked out of his real life and put into a never-ending nightmare, where everything looks the same, but for a single missing color that he can’t quite place—but Cole has put in a relentless effort to drag Varric out of the darkness. As it turns out, he doesn’t need to be a spirit of compassion to heal the hurt; he simply has a light in him that never goes out.

He hears a rustle and turns his gaze to Cole who has unceremoniously dumped all the blankets off of his body and gotten to his feet.

“Morning, kid. Did you sleep alright?” he asks, his voice still husky half with pain and half with drowsiness.

“I’m not tired anymore,” Cole replies. Even as a human, he doesn’t really mince his words.

Varric grins, giving Cole an affectionate pat on the arm. “Well, then. Are you hungry? How about we get some breakfast in you. Sound good?”

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold – Kitchen**

**7:15**

* * *

A loud scream leads Varric and Cole over to the castle’s kitchen, only to stumble upon a frustrated Sera. She kicks the oven, not anticipating how hard it would be and pulling her injured foot up to her chest.

Charter leans against the kitchen table, her eyes following Sera as she hops around, cursing profusely. Charter straightens up when she notices the newcomers and gives them a smile. “Sera and I just got started on breakfast. Turns out we’re both hopeless in the kitchen.”

Varric can’t help but let out a booming laugh. “Alright, kids. Let’s see what we’re working with here.”

He hasn’t cooked for himself in quite a while—the Inquisition’s kitchen staff have spoiled him—but he can still hold his own. He manages, thanks to Charter’s indispensable assistance, to bake enough bread for the group; and while Cole and Sera were pretty much useless throughout the entire process, the two of them did, however, manage to dig up some jam that had been left in the pantry by the cook before they left.

They gather their modest breakfast and set it on the table in the castle foyer, along with a set of plates and silverware. The smell of the bread on this cold winter morning is enough to make Varric’s heart melt.

Cole and Sera have already taken their seats at the table; Sera’s plate is full before Varric even has a chance to suggest that they wait for the others to arrive, while Cole is nibbling at a loaf of bread like a kitten. Varric and Charter share a look, coming to the conclusion that there never really was any point to begin with.

“I think Sister Nightingale and the rest of the Lady Inquisitor’s advisors spent the night at the Inn,” Charter says. “I’ll go down and call them over.”

Varric sighs. “That leaves me to go wake up the lovebirds.”

“Don’t bother!” a voice that unmistakably belongs to Dorian Pavus calls out.

Dorian strolls across the foyer towards them with the gait of a swan, his robes trailing after him like overgrown feathers. Meanwhile Bull follows after him, looking more like a drunk penguin who forgot how to walk overnight.

Varric gives Charter a nod of acknowledgement before she sets off and then addresses his friends. “Look who finally decided to show up.”

Bull snorts. “Don’t look at me. All I did was put on my pants and I was good to go.”

“Oh, _don’t_,” Dorian interjects. “You also had to wash your face and apply your horn cream and do your morning stretches…And you spent at least ten minutes gargling! Who needs ten full minutes to gargle? It’s gargle, rinse, spit—it should only really take you two minutes if you’re thorough.”

Varric puts his hands in his pockets and looked over to the door leading to the Inquisitor’s wing, vividly remembering the loud clatter as the door slammed shut in Cullen’s face the night before. “Someone’s gonna have to take one for the team and wake Claws up.” His eyes survey the Iron Bull—hands down the most imposing of the individuals gathered. “Tiny.”

Bull scoffs. “I don’t have a deathwish,” he deadpanned.

They hear a racket and turn their attention to Sera, who has managed to pry herself away from her breakfast push her seat away from the table. “You’re all babies!” she complains, getting to her feet and straightening out her blouse. “‘_Ohhh! We’re all such strong men! Oooh! Oooooh! We can’t talk to the Inquisitor! Because she’s a big scary meanie!_” she says, raising her voice an octave. “Cowards. The lot of you!”

After struggling to gather up what dignity they had left off the floor, where Sera had completely stomped it with her too-big boots, the group decides to head to the Inquisitor’s wing together.

As they enter, they hear a familiar gruff voice call out. “M’lady, are you awake?”

Even if Varric hadn’t immediately recognized the voice, he knows that there is presently only one person in Skyhold who would speak like a kissass, and it isn’t Anya’s ass they’re kissing. They find Blackwall standing sheepishly at Ambassador Montilyet’s chamber door, which is located in the corridor leading up to the Inquisitor’s bedroom. Blackwall and the ambassador haven’t exactly been subtle about their courtship—they think they are, which is what makes it all so frustrating.

Of course, Sera can’t help but make kissy faces and coo mockingly. “You coming in to give your lady a morning back rub?” she teases, letting slip a small giggle, almost like a hiccup.

“She’s usually up by now. The sun’s been up for a while, and she’s not known to wake up late,” Blackwall replies solemnly. “I’m just worried.”

The corners of Varric’s lips turn up sympathetically and he reaches up to place a hand against Blackwall’s shoulder. “Aww. There, there, lover-boy. I think Ruffles and the advisors spent the night over at the Herald’s Rest. Curly did say they had drinks together last night. Probably didn’t want to risk going out in the storm in the dead of night.”

Just then, they hear the clicking of the door. The Iron Bull, without an iota of tact, pushes the door open just far enough that his head can fit, but not his horns. He peers into the room briefly and then extracts himself. “She’s not there. Bed’s not even used.” He finally pushes the door all the way open, inviting the others to get an eyeful of the ambassador’s meticulously organized bedroom. Her curtains hadn’t even been drawn shut for the night so the room is flooded with early morning sunlight.

“We shouldn’t pry,” Blackwall says properly, making a visible effort to look away from the room. It’s almost as if he thinks the rest of the group isn’t perfectly aware just how much he’s seen of that room already.

They shut the door and move on towards the Inquisitor’s chambers, which are up a flight of stairs at the end of the hall. Sera doesn’t waste any time and immediately starts to pound on the door.

“Hey, Annie!” she hollers loud enough that the group over at the inn can probably hear her. “Rise and shine! We made breakfast!”

“She’s quiet.”

Varric’s skin nearly leaps off his body when he hears Cole’s voice. “Kid? I thought you were eating in the hall.”

Cole may be human, but he’s still Cole. He lingers to the back of the group, back sticking to the wall. “We should get the commander. He’ll know what to do,” he suggests with a voice like a chilly draft from an open window.

The group looks to Varric as the final say on the matter, and he simply meets Cole’s eyes gently. “The kid’s right. We can’t say we didn’t try. Let’s let Curly deal with her. If she’s still moody from last night, I don’t wanna get in the middle of it.”

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold – Foyer**

**8:30**

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Charter to return with Leliana, Cullen, Cassandra, and Josephine. The advisors each look a different sort of disheveled when they arrive—well, all except for Leliana, but Varric is pretty sure that she’s made some kind of deal with a demon to always appear as though she has just gone through a six hour beauty regimen.

“She’s still mad?” Cullen asks, his tone heavily soaked with concern. It seems like Dorian has filled him in on what went on just before his arrival. “That’s not like her.”

Getting a bit impatient, Varric takes a seat at the table; he’s not about to watch the bread he spent almost an hour baking get cold just because Anya feels like punishing her lover. It seems like most of the individuals present have the same idea because, aside from Cullen, the rest of the group take their seats at the table.

Josephine makes a half-hearted effort to comb down her hair, which had twisted and coiled into a curly mop overnight, but she soon gives up and begins to fill her plate. She and Blackwall don’t end up sitting beside each other, but Varric catches them stealing glances from across the table. Blackwall’s relief at his lady love being safe and sound is like an ooze that pours out of him and spills onto the people surrounding him.

Cassandra is a woman of very few words; she silently speaks to Leliana at the end of the table which is as far from Varric as she can get. Every so often, however, he sees her eyeing the door to the Inquisitor’s wing with her hawk-like gaze.

The atmosphere is tense, but that’s really what Anya Surana does. She doesn’t even do it consciously—at least Varric doesn’t think she does—but there is something about her, like a cloud of misfortune that follows her around, spreading over everyone close to her. Perhaps that’s why she chooses to isolate herself and push people away—why she had let the world believe she was dead for seven years.

It has always been clear to anyone who has been close to Anya that the title of ‘Inquisitor’ is one that she has always held at an arm’s distance. Maybe part of her knows about the cloud, and knows that if given the right amount of influence, it could swallow everyone beneath her. Maybe when she confessed years ago that she had, in fact, murdered the Divine, she meant it with every fibre of her being; and maybe she still means it.

The uncomfortable silence is interrupted by a loud thud, which sends the ever vigilant Cassandra straight to her feet. “What on earth–” she cries out. Before she can finish her sentence, she dashes towards the Inquisitor’s wing, the only possible candidate for the noise’s origin. Leliana and Charter share a cautious look before getting to their feet and running off after her.

“Trouble?” the Iron Bull grunts, gazing forlornly at his meal the way one would gaze at a distant lover.

“I don’t know,” Varric states. “But I’m sure the Seeker can handle–”

The words are forcefully shoved back into Varric’s mouth when a strangled scream rips through the air, sinking onto the already mounting tension in the room. It’s masculine, so it could only be Cullen, but it’s not a sound they’ve heard Cullen make in all the time they’ve known him. It sounds almost like a dying animal or a howling ghost. Whatever it was, it makes the air in Varric’s lungs feel like pure lead.

The seven people seated on the table stare at each other in shock, waiting for some kind of cue from each other. None of their minds are clear enough to even entertain the idea that they should get up and investigate—none, but the Iron Bull, of course, who calmly pushes back his seat and with the solemnity of a mourner at a funeral, makes his way across the room. It’s not long before the rest are also scrambling to their feet.

There is more howling as they approach the room, finding the door to have been completely blown out of the frame—likely due in part to Cassandra and Cullen’s joined efforts. The first thing they see through the doorway is a kneeling bundle of burgundy on the floor, furiously shaking, and Cassandra with her arm draped over his shoulder, leaning into him and mumbling quietly.

Charter meets Varric at the door, a horrified expression on her face as she speaks. “It’s the Inquisitor,” she says breathlessly, her lips quivering in a way that is completely uncharacteristic of the cool and collected spy. “She’s dead. She’s dead! Someone’s killed her.”

If Varric’s heart felt heavy before, it just sinks one thousand feet below the earth’s surface. Dead. Anya Surana is dead. The inquisitor is dead. The person who closed the breach, defeated Corypheus, and saved Thedas is…dead.

As much as he tries to repeat the words over and over in his mind, he can’t even make sense of them. No; he has to see her. He doesn’t want to see her, of course, but he has to. He has to make it real so he can act like it’s really real.

He finds the Iron Bull hovering over her corpse, which is laid on her bed, and oh, she’s dead, alright; he’s seen enough corpses to know the real deal. Although the thick two-handed blade protruding from her chest and piercing into the mattress beneath her is also a good indication that she’s not really alive anymore. He’d know that sword anywhere, too; that’s Anya’s weapon of choice—a cumbersome-looking sword she claimed had been given to her by the Arishok himself as a gift.

Varric casts a curious glance up at the Iron Bull, who is glaring at Anya’s face like she’d just told one of her famously awful jokes. Almost as though he were compelled by a trance, he reaches down and cups her tiny chin in his massive qunari hand, squeezing her cheek and prying her mouth open.

“Fucking hell, Tiny. What are you doing?” Varric snaps, sneering in disgust.

Dorian, who has only just managed to gather up the courage to approach, similarly voices his malcontent. “Is that really necessary?”

“There’s something in here.” That’s the only explanation Bull offers as he sticks two of his fingers between the corpse’s lips. He pauses and then looks over at Varric and Dorian. “It’s almost like you two have never seen a dead body before.”

Dorian turns his eyes to the floor, his shoulders caving in as he rubs his arm like he’s trying to scrub filth off of it. “It’s not the what of it; it’s the who…”

Bull ignores them and continues fishing in Anya’s mouth before quirking his eyebrow and extracting something long and silver from the poor girl’s maw—a key.

This is enough to rid Dorian of any reservations he previously held, as he leans in close to observe Bull’s discovery. “Is that–”

“That’s the key to the Inquisitor’s chambers,” Leliana remarks, approaching the group. “Where did you find this?” she asks impatiently.

“Nearly halfway down her throat,” Bull replies. “But I don’t know how she expected to swallow something this big.” Varric nearly expects Bull to make a lewd quip, but it’s really neither the time nor the place.

Leliana’s brow is deeply furrowed, her slender eyes seem to be looking in every direction at once, trying to assess the room. “Indeed. However, this simply makes our investigation into the matter much more difficult.”

“How so?” Dorian questions, placing an inquisitive hand underneath his chin.

“Her door was locked,” she replies. “And if that key—the only key to Anya’s room—was on Anya’s person, then the door was locked from the inside and not the outside.”

“So how did the killer get out?” Varric asks nobody in particular, and just as that question crosses his mind, another stubbornly pushes through to the front: Who in this room is the culprit? There are only twelve people in Skyhold—well, _eleven _now.

Leliana paces around Anya’s bed slowly. “Of course, we cannot rule out magic,” she adds. “But even for a mage—a locked door would be an obstacle.”

“What about the balcony?” Bull presses.

“That was locked as well,” she replies. “I have checked every inch of this room. There are no trap doors and no way of entering apart from the main entrance and the balcony—although the balcony is very high up, so I doubt anyone would attempt to enter through there.”

“And are you thinking what I’m thinking, Nightingale?” he says.

Leliana cocks her head to the side, her perfect red locks shifting with it. “That one of us is the murderer?”

“Yep,” he replies.

“What?” Dorian hisses, offense written all over his face. “You can’t be serious.”

Despite Dorian’s protest, Varric allows himself to survey the room. All twelve of them are in this room: Cullen and Cassandra haven’t moved since they entered; Sera is standing at the back, avoiding the body as though murder were a malady she could catch by sight alone; Blackwall is consoling Josephine, who has begun to sob loudly into his chest, subtlety be damned; Charter seems to be checking Anya’s closet for clues, likely by Leliana’s order; and Cole is unsurprisingly hovering behind Varric like his shadow.

A dead Inquisitor, an isolated castle in a snowstorm, eleven likely suspects, and no way to escape? It doesn’t occur to Varric right then, but this would make one hell of a novel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr 17.10.2018]


	2. Chapter 2

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Foyer**

**10:30**

* * *

The breakfast that Varric and Charter had poured their soul into sits untouched on the dinner table. It looks completely unappetizing in light of the circumstances. It seems almost like a set of expertly made wooden replicas—cold, hard, and stale.

Varric sighs as he pokes and prods at the fireplace. The chill in the room runs deeper than the chilly winter air, but it’s the least he can do. And Maker, is it cold in here. Colder still in the Inquisitor’s chambers.

It’s hard to say how he feels about her being dead. It’s not really something that he’s ever thought about—not that he goes around wondering how he’ll feel in the event that any of his friends die. And yet, is she—had she ever been his friend? Is he sad that she’s gone? He’s leaning strongly towards a resounding “No” on all counts.

Is that cruel to think? Probably is. She probably wanted at least the bare minimum as far as being mourned by her companions.So long as someone is sad, Varric considers himself exempt from that duty. He considers that this lack of emotion might register to some as motive, but anyone who knew Anya when she was alive wouldn’t find this at all surprising.

Hell, even Leliana, who had in a past life considered Anya a lover, is investigating the occurrence with a lack of attachment one would normally grant a puzzle or a toy. Of course, that could just be how Leliana operates. She’s the kind of woman that lets all her emotions simmer inside of her while she gives you that glassy expression of hers—the one where you can’t tell whether she’s happy or plotting your murder.

In complete contrast, however, Sera wears her emotions on her sleeve; though it’s more of an emotional tunic at this point. Her grief manifests as violence—surprising absolutely nobody. She’s lucky that Skyhold is made out of stone because the beating that she’s given the weeping walls could have slain the mightiest dragon, and the castle collapsing on top of them is really the last thing they need.

The one Varric’s really worried about, though, is Cullen. Whatever opinions Varric may have held about their union, it was clear to anyone that Cullen thought the Maker’s light shone out of Anya’s ass—which is funny considering Anya preferred the Elvhen gods. Cassandra’s made a point of not leaving Cullen alone at any point since discovering his wife had been skewered, and the last time anyone had seen them, Cassandra had managed to drag him out of his wife’s bedroom and into the war room.

“Fucking hell,” the Iron Bull grumbles, burying his face in his palms. His shoulders are slumped, almost as though they’d grown far too heavy to carry.

“Fucking hell is right.” Varric rubs his eyes gingerly. He’d give anything to go back to sleep and pretend none of this is happening.

“A murderer in our midst.” Dorian lets out a half-hearted chuckle. “Do you know what they call that in Tevinter? Tuesday.” Nobody but Varric has the stomach to laugh at his little quip.

“I hope the murderer doesn’t steal anyone else’s legs.” Cole is sitting cross-legged on the seat next to Varric, playing with the sleeves of his shirt, which Varric could swear fit him perfectly when he bought the damn thing, but Cole’s managed to stretch it far enough that the fabric dangles far past his hands.

Varric raises an eyebrow. “The hell are you talking about, kid?”

“He stole her legs.”

The Iron Bull shifts in place and provides an explanation. “I think he’s talking about how Anya’s prosthetics weren’t on her.”

With a half-smile, Varric rubs Cole’s shoulder. “The killer didn’t do that, kid. Her legs just do that sometimes.”

“Can yours?” Cole asks, wide-eyed. “Mine can’t.”

In spite of himself, Varric laughs. “No, the Inquisitor’s just special like that.”

“Poor thing couldn’t even escape even if she wanted to,” Dorian notes, pulling the mood back down below sea level.

The group hears a long deep sigh, coming muffled from inside Blackwall’s hands. Varric’s heart tugs as he recalls how Blackwall in particular had been very close with the Inquisitor; he recalls that Anya had known months before anyone else about Blackwall’s true identity, and her advisors nearly bit her head off when they realized she had been helping him keep up the charade all that time.

“Can we just drop it,” his voice rumbles from deep in his chest, quivering slightly like a curtain against an open window.

The group is silent for a moment, but as though he were sitting on a pin, the Iron Bull hums and remarks in a low drawl, “Weird that she didn’t struggle. She wouldn’t have saved Thedas twice if she were easy to kill.”

Deep lines form in Blackwall’s brow as he sucks in a sharp shuddering breath through his nostrils. “I told you to drop it.”

Bull’s eyes sparkle indignantly as he leans back nonchalantly in his seat. “What’s your problem? Don’t you wanna know who killed her?”

Blackwall’s seat scratches against the stone with a sharp shriek as he pushes away from the table. “Of course I do! I want to kill the bastard that did it! But at least wait a fucking hour to start picking her corpse apart for clues.”

“Technically, she’s been dead for at least six hours—give or take,” Dorian chirps cheerfully.

Sensing that he may be the only person at the table who is genuinely distraught that the Inquisitor is dead, Blackwall picks himself up with an aggressive grunt and stomps off towards the back of the room.

Now that it’s safe to drop all tact and sensitivity, Varric pulls a flagon of ale from beside the fireplace and pours a tall glass for himself. He raises it for all his companions to see. “It’s warm.”

“Normally, I’d consider it far too early to drink, but now I think the best time to drink was an hour ago,” Dorian laments, holding out his own glass like an eager child.

Varric absentmindedly turns his gaze back towards the back of the room, but Blackwall seems to have gone into the advisors’ wing, where the War Room and Josephine’s bureau are located—likely trying to find Josephine. The Inquisitor’s throne sits at the back of the room—a sturdy structure, built more for comfort than elegance, but it serves its purpose well regardless. If you’re staring up into Anya’s eyes, your head level with her boots, then you have bigger things to worry about than how her throne looks.

The Iron Bull helps himself to some ale as Charter approaches, taking a seat beside him at the table. “I’ll have some of that,” she says, catching Cole’s intense prying stare and returning it with a grin.

Cole smiles back weakly and Varric has to give him credit, because the poor boy has been working on his social skills under Varric’s tutelage for over a year now, and while he may not be perfect, Varric’s proud of how far he’s come. He places a hand on Cole’s hunched shoulder and greets Charter.

“How’s our spymaster holding up?”

“Sister Nightingale?” Charter takes a swig of ale. “She and Seeker Cassandra have been at each other’s throats for half an hour now. I barely escaped with my life.”

“That bad, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

The entire group must look ridiculous, all staring at the table, feeling Anya’s overbearing presence now more than ever. Wherever she is—Maker’s bosom or wherever elves think they go when they die—she must be laughing her ass off; she’d tap dance all over the thick layer of tension she’s managed to drop onto her companions.

“They’re still arguing over how the killer did it,” Charter elaborates. “Cassandra thinks it’s magic, but Leliana isn’t so sure.”

Dorian rolls his eyes. “That’s as good as saying that_ I’m_ the killer. Perhaps as good as saying Cassandra hasn’t trusted me from the start.” He mumbles the last part of his statement with a strong undertone of bitterness.

“For being a mage from Tevinter? I doubt she ever did,” the Iron Bull candidly remarks, reaching over for Varric’s flagon to refill his glass. “What’s in this, by the way? It tastes like water.”

“Well, that’s all we’ve got—unless you wanna go out to the tavern in that storm.”

Almost as if the Maker himself had been listening in on their conversation, the group hears the deafening sound of thunder, and Varric gives Bull a sly smile, as if to say, “I told you so.”

“So let’s hear it, huh?” Dorian says. “What’s the theory?”

“Theory?” Charter narrows her eyes.

“How does Cassandra think Anya died?”

“Well, she doesn’t know. It’s not as clean cut as the lady seeker would like.”

“How so?”

Charter takes a long and satisfying gulp of ale before laying it all out for the group. “For a minute, let’s ignore the whodunit and focus on the how. Here’s what we know so far: The Inquisitor went to bed before anyone else did. The next morning she was impaled on her own sword. There were no signs of a struggle and she was laid neatly on her bed. Her prosthetic legs weren’t found at the scene of the crime and are still missing. Every door leading in or out of her chamber was locked from the inside. Her chamber key was found jammed down her throat. The locks don’t look like they’ve been tampered with either by a lockpick or by magic. Meaning that whoever killed her would have had to enter through either her bedroom door or—and this is far less likely—the balcony doors.”

The Iron Bull frowned and leaned forward. “Cassandra and Cullen broke her door and lock to get in; how could you tell that the locks hadn’t been messed with?”

She rubbed her elbow and shrugged. “Sister Nightingale has an eye for these things. I also checked them and couldn’t find any indication. I’m sure Ser Varric, Sera, or Cole could figure that out as well.”

Varric makes a note to check the lock for himself. She’s right in that there are definitely telltale signs that a lock has been picked and who better to recognize them than a rogue.

“Fair enough,” Bull replies. “So are we ruling out suicide?”

Charter smirks. “No, I suppose not.”

“That would be anticlimactic,” Dorian says. “She’s far too obnoxious to make it that easy for us.” He then leans against the back of his seat and, with a flourish of his wrist, asks, “So how is Leliana so sure it wasn’t magic? Perhaps I know of a spell that can unlock doors and make it appear as though they hadn’t been touched. Or perhaps a spell that lets me walk through solid objects like a phantom.”

“Do you?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I wouldn’t tell you if I did, now would I?”

Their talk is cut short by the door beside the Inquisitor’s throne slamming open and Cassandra stomping through it with a face like she’d just eaten rotten meat. She makes a beeline for their table, making Varric’s stomach fold in on itself like a scared insect. He’s at least eighty percent sure he hasn’t done anything to deserve that murderous glare.

“All of you,” she announces gutturally. “With me.”

Like obedient children, everyone in the group rises to their feet.

“You, as well, Sera,” she adds in a less stern voice.

That managed to get the attention of Sera, who had, until just now, been off on her own in a distant corner of the room. She gives the wall one more icy stare before turning a blank expression to the rest of the group, and it makes Varric shudder to see her look so…deflated. He hasn’t seen Sera like this since Adamant; it’s like her spark was snuffed out by a thick blanket.

Cassandra announces—more like barks angrily in their general direction—that she, Leliana, and Cullen plan on interrogating the group in the hopes of discovering if any of them had witnessed anything of significance. That is, of course, assuming Cassandra, Leliana, and Cullen haven’t conspired to murder her themselves and are using their authority to hide their involvement. Of course, that would be nonsense, wouldn’t it? The thought of it nearly brings a chuckle out of Varric, but he’s forced to swallow the impulse, lest he get a boot to the head, courtesy of Cassandra.

It doesn’t take much to get the group assembled near the center of the Foyer. The four advisors move together like a clique, while Varric sticks close to Cole, Bull, Dorian, and Sera. Charter hovers close, but separate, like an outsider.

It’s not long before Leliana clears her throat and says, “Where’s Blackwall?”

The group emits a low hum, as each person finds themselves looking about the room, as though they all expect to find Blackwall crouching behind them. It’s never that easy, though. Nothing has been easy, today.

“You don’t know?” Varric asks uncertainly, his gaze hovering over the group of advisors and then landing firmly on Josephine, whose grip on her ruffles is so tight that her knuckles have paled.

“We assumed that he was with you.” Cassandra’s unwavering confidence is like an elder tree in a storm, its roots slowly beginning to unfurl from the earth.

“Do you think he ran?” Charter suggests, hesitant to speak up about a member of the Inquisitor’s open circle so candidly. _Do you think he’s guilty?_

“Where would he go?” Cassandra replies. The castle gates were shut before the storm and only Cullen and I have access.”

Varric senses that their discussion is about to get circular, and one look at Leliana tells him that she’s of the same mind. “It doesn’t matter. We can start without him.”

Josephine pales and all but lunges at Leliana. “But what if the Inquisitor’s killer finds him.”

“He should be perfectly safe on his own.” Leliana’s eyes narrow. “Unless you are suggesting that there is someone in Skyhold that we don’t know of?” Her words crash down on them like a falling chandelier after its chain has endured all that it can handle—Leliana believes that one of them is the killer, and it seems like Josephine, whose soft eyes are like glistening saucers, had dismissed that idea on principle.

The air in the room is heavy and sits on their windpipes stubbornly, blocking out any words they may have shared. It becomes increasingly clear that this chat that Leliana is planning is not a simple exchange of information, but an interrogation. Leliana is no longer looking at anyone as a friend, colleague, or even ally; rather she looks at them and she sees in each of them a potential murderer—someone who crept into the Inquisitor’s room in the dead of night, grabbed her sword, and plunged it cleanly into her heart, without hesitation and without remorse.

Leliana no longer looks like herself, but a stranger—a poor imitation of the real thing. Her eyes scan the group, and with a satisfied nod, she finally says, “Very well; we will look for him before meeting. We should all split into groups of two and meet up in the rotunda.”

Cullen, whose eyes are still swollen and tired, steps up and says, “An hour should be sufficient. Try not to be late. If you don’t find him within the hour, chances are someone else will have.”

“Cullen and I will search the library and the rookery—and we will check the Inquisitor’s room again,” Cassandra quickly says, causing Leliana’s sharp eyes to snap towards her.

“Charter and I will then handle the Circle of Magi, the tavern, and the ramparts,” Leliana replies and then turns to face the rest of the group, who seem to have paired up with whoever is conveniently beside them: Varric with Cole, Bull with Dorian, and Sera with Josephine.

There was an air of reluctance about the rest of the group, so the Iron Bull is next to speak. “Dorian and I can handle the stables, training ground, and barracks.” Dorian swears in Tevene under his breath, but surprisingly, doesn’t object further.

“Cole and I have got the undercroft, kitchen, and cellar covered.” Varric tries not to sound too relieved that he managed to pick out one of the locations that don’t involve getting his boots wet.

“That leaves Josephine and Sera to search the garden,” Leliana concludes, letting out her first real emotion of the day as she speaks to Josephine in particular. “Will you be able to handle that?”

Josephine is markedly more composed than Cullen is, at the very least, so Varric senses that Leliana may be laying the concern on a little bit too thick…but, of course, that’s none of his business.

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Foyer**

**11:00**

* * *

Each duo heads to their assigned locations, and Varric beckons Cole over to the door to the right of the Inquisitor’s throne, which leads down into the undercroft. The door leads to what can only be described as an unrelenting darkness, so black that Varric hesitates to put his foot through the door. It’s not that he’s never been to the undercroft, but with all its usual occupants gone, nobody has bothered to light the narrow stairway leading into it—the passage brings out a sense of claustrophobia that he’d developed after Bartrand trapped him in the Deep Roads years ago.

Fucking Bartrand… This is the worst time for the memory of his deceased older brother to rear its ugly head. For a moment, he could have sworn he could see the son of a bitch staring at him from within the darkness. It’s Cole, who dutifully marches in without a hint of hesitation, as though the darkness were a familiar and comfortable place, who brings Varric’s consciousness back to the matter at hand.

He yelps on instinct when, out of the darkness, cold leather closes around his hand, sending chills up and down his arms.

“You’re scared?” The hushed whisper, almost indistinguishable from the sound of the storm outside, belongs to Cole.

Varric clears his throat and untangles his hand from Cole’s, simply patting the boy’s forearm gently. “What did we say about sneaking up on people, kid?”

“But I was in front of you,” he innocently replies.

Letting out the long deep sigh of a man who has exhausted every possible dialogue option, Varric mumbles, “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just search this place quick so we can get out of here.”

Upon opening the door at the bottom of the staircase, an icy breeze is released and Varric instinctively reaches up to his open shirt to protect his skin from the chill that had nestled in his chest hair. The undercroft is wide and open, with an enviable set of equipment—all anyone would need for crafting, smithing, rune-work, and the like—as well as rooms off to the side for Dagna, Harritt, and their aides, including a large chamber which serves as the Inquisition’s armory.

A quick pan over the central chamber of the undercroft immediately tells them that, not only is Blackwall not there, but that the entire area seems to have not seen a single person in weeks—as they get closer to the massive opening at the far end of the chamber, they find that the ground is speckled with chalky bird droppings. Out of obligation, Varric and Cole attempt to peek into the side rooms, but the bedrooms seem to have been locked, likely by their owners, and the armory is bolted shut; if he had to guess, he’d say that the keys were probably in Anya’s room. Varric has to remind his companion that picking the locks isn’t worth it and would likely get him in trouble.

After making the trek up the staircase and back into the main hall of the castle, they find Cassandra hovering outside the door to the Inquisitor’s wing, her hand gingerly pawing at the door handle, her neck rigid and her head bent low.

“Well, if it isn’t our Seeker. What are you doing here alone? Weren’t you supposed to be with Cullen?”

Cassandra’s head turns to face him like a wooden doll, and all that’s missing is the rough groan of unsanded wood rubbing against wood. “Varric.” It’s not exactly a greeting, more of an observation. “Cullen wanted to search the library and rookery himself, so I am going to search the Inquisitor’s room.”

“And when were you planning on doing that? Tomorrow? Next week maybe?”

She scowls and her hand balls up into a fist. He’s not too worried, because she’s been getting really good at resisting the urge to dislocate his nose—he’s not too comfortable either, though, because with everything that’s been going on, her patience is a taut rubber band, and he doesn’t want to be within range of it when it snaps.

“Don’t patronize me. I was just about to go inside before you interrupted me.”

“Of course you were,” he says, and he can’t stop the shit-eating grin that spreads across his face. Yes, the seeker has ways of wiping that smirk off his face, but that’s an occupational hazard he’s willing to risk. “Well, then. I’ll get out of your way.”

As he turns towards the advisor’s wing on his way to the cellar, he hears Cassandra call out his name. “Wait!”

He takes his time turning on his heel. “Yes, Seeker?”

“You did not find Blackwall in the undercroft?”

“No.”

“Did anything else seem out of place?”

Before Varric can even bring up the image of the undercroft in his mind, Cole is already speaking. “There were footprints. To and from the armory. Varric said that I couldn’t pick the lock.”

Varric looks up at Cole in shock. “Kid,” he says in exasperation. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” With the shit that Cole notices and fails to point out, he’d make the world’s worst detective.

“What kind of footprints?” Cassandra presses calmly.

“They were smudged,” Cole says. “I couldn’t tell who made them.”

“You think that’s our killer?” Varric says, watching Cassandra zone out, almost as if she were scanning the information she now has in her mind.

“Perhaps,” she finally says. “It could also be Blackwall, although I see little reason for him to lock himself away in the armory.” —_Unless he’s the killer,_ Varric thinks to himself— “It may be worth it for us to find the key and investigate if for ourselves.”

“‘Us’?” Varric repeats.

“Yes.” Cassandra narrows her eyes sternly. “You and Cole are coming with me.”

“What about the cellar and kitchen?”

“There is likely nothing there, but these footsteps… They may be important. We can always come back to the cellar once we’re done.”

Cassandra leads them into the Inquisitor’s wing with renewed vigor—any qualms she once held with regards to revisiting the crime scene are now gone. She marches along the hall and up the stairs too fast for Varric’s dwarven legs to keep up. By the time Varric, slightly winded and much warmer than he had been earlier, is in Anya’s bedroom, Cassandra is already rifling through Anya’s bureau, with Cole looking over her shoulder.

She lets out a disgruntled groan when she comes up empty. “It should be here.”

Varric makes himself useful by going over to Anya’s bedside tables and thoroughly combing through her personal belongings for the key. He can’t help but send out a mental apology for breaching her privacy like this—even going through her drawers feels like looting her dead body, which, now that he’s mentioning it, is starting to smell a little.

His fatigued eyes land on her pale, waxy face—somewhat more pale than it had been a couple of hours ago. People say that the dead sometimes look like they’re just sleeping, but he’s traveled alongside Anya for the better part of two years, and he knows what she looks like when she’s asleep; and that’s not what ‘asleep’ looks like for Anya. ‘Asleep’ looks like eyes as tight as raisins as she battles demons in the Fade, and scared whimpers that sound strange and disquieting on her lips. This is the demons finally catching up to her, pulling them down into murky whirlpools, never to escape; this is everything she’s never wanted to see again grabbing her by the hair and wrapping its arms around her like ribbons. This is ‘dead’

For the second time that day, he feels Cole’s hesitant and cold fingers slip into his hand, and he squeezes them lightly. He then watches Cole reach over to Anya’s body, completely undeterred by the concept of it, and poke through her pockets. Varric wants to tell him to stop, but he acknowledges that, compared to finding her bedroom key jammed halfway down her throat, looking through her clothes is far less invasive and out of place.

It takes Cole a few minutes of careful poking and prodding before he produces the key from within one of her back pockets and faithfully hands it over to Varric, who hesitantly receives the object.

“You found it?” Cassandra asks, snatching it from between his fingers.

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Undercroft**

**11:30**

* * *

The armory is dark and cold, even after Cassandra lights the torches along its walls, and Blackwall is definitely not hiding within. It feels more like an ancient crypt—actually, the entire castle is giving off the vibe of a crypt now that its owner is dead. He feels like he’s trespassing on haunted ground wherever he steps, like the spilt blood is going to weaken the veil and open up a Fade rift big enough to swallow him whole—and the only person capable of closing that rift, the person with the Fade mark on her hand, is Anya, and, well, she’s not gonna be closing any Fade rifts anytime soon. It had never occurred to him how, regardless of his own personal relationship with the Inquisitor, her presence had made him feel safe. Now, there’s nobody to hold the door against all the weird shit in the Fade.

Cole steps into the room, surveying the room like a lighthouse. With bated breath, Cassandra’s eyes follow him, holding Varric back with one arm, warning him against entering or tampering with the scene before them.

At a glance, the armory also seems to be untouched—well, this according to Varric’s untrained eyes, but Cole seems to be thoughtfully pacing in carefully drawn loops around the room. “These footsteps are brushed away, but they forgot one. They stopped here.” As he speaks, he pauses his pacing to stand before an empty sword stand. “This is where she kept it.”

“You said they forgot to brush away one of the footsteps,” Cassandra says. “Where is it? Who does it belong to?”

Cole follows his previous looping path, stopping in the middle of the room and crouching down, his head completely obscured by his wide-brimmed hat. “This one. They’re boots—small boots.”

“Whose boots are they, Cole?” she insists impatiently.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you _mean _you don’t know?” Her tone begins to grow louder, and Varric tosses his caution out the window to tug on her elbow, as if to subtly remind her that Cole is not the type to intentionally hide information, and that his ‘I don’t know’ should be taken at face value.

“This is good information, Seeker,” Varric tells her slowly, as though appeasing a wild horse. “We have an intact footprint, and well, aside from Anya, we all have intact feet to compare it to.”

The storm brewing within Cassandra is sated for the moment and she nods. “You’re right.” She sighs and then says, “Cole, I would like your help comparing these prints to the soles of everyone’s shoes. Can you do that?”

Cole nods. “Yes. They’re not your shoes or Varric’s shoes. And they’re not mine either.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.”

Varric’s gaze pans over to the seeker and he raises his brows as if to say, “_That’s my boy!_”

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Foyer**

**11:45**

* * *

It’s an absolute relief to be back in the main hall of the castle again. Making the trek up and down that undercroft staircase will never cease to unsettle Varric, and now that Cole has cleared him of suspicion—at least on the count of sneaking around the armory—he has no reason to go back there; and thank the Maker for that!

As the group begins to walk across the hall, a conversation carries over to them. It’s hard to make out the context, but they can tell that the voices belong to Sera and Josephine and that they seem to be coming from the rotunda. The two of them had much less ground to cover in searching for Blackwall, after all.

The rotunda has changed a lot since the defeat of Corypheus, but it never really stopped being Solas’s study. Large intricate murals cover every inch of the wall, towering figures and beautiful landscapes—a stunning depiction of Anya’s journey from start to finish, one that Solas likely did out of passion for the cause more than any sort of feelings of companionship towards Anya. The one that always gets Varric is the eerie set of eyes that start the mural—if he stares at them for too long, it sometimes feels like Chuckles himself is staring back at him.

“Cassandra?”

Josephine and Sera are sitting on the divan beside the stairs—Josephine with one leg over the other like a proper noblewoman, and Sera with both legs pulled up beneath her, rocking back and forth impatiently. The two of them immediately look up at the newcomers.

“Where’s Cullen?” Sera asks.

Cassandra frowns, and with good reason. Cullen was supposed to be examining this very area; if he were around, he should have said something to make his presence known. This is incredibly unusual. She turns her head to look up towards the library and rookery, and Varric finds himself doing the same. Af first, he sees nothing but darkness and bird cages, but something is swaying, as if by a rogue breeze.

“Watch out!”

Cassandra’s voice echoes loudly against the circular walls, and Varric feels his arm slam against the ground before he can react to the alarming pitch. There’s less than a moment’s silence before they’re assaulted with the sound of a deafening bang, almost like a bone cracking but much louder and amplified by the acoustics of the room.

At first, Varric can’t see anything, his vision impaired by the bulk of Cassandra’s body, but he hears a shriek so high it could shatter glass, and it nearly shatters his eardrums. He begins to shove Cassandra off of him, and she stumbles to her feet with far less dexterity than usual.

It takes him about three seconds to identify what Cassandra had just saved him from. In precisely the spot he had been standing, he can see a pair of sturdy, well worn boots, hovering a mere foot off the ground, and attached to them, a pair of legs in warm leather breeches. Just above that, the strong torso of a man who’s had a sword in his hand from childhood, his arms dangling at either side of him. And on top, his head._ His head_. Scarred, and scruffy with a mop of golden curls on top. _His fucking head_. Cullen’s head.

And around his neck? A noose—the secure knot at the back of his neck attached to a rope that extends all the way up to the latticework holding up Leliana’s bird cages. It’s surprising that it can even hold up a grown man.

Varric is still absorbing the scene when Cassandra turns around and dashes up the stairs. Of course, she’s going after the killer, if they’re even still up there—the one who must have heard them talking about Cullen only to drop him at the most opportune moment, almost as if to taunt them.

But why Cullen?

“‘_The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm_’—,” Cole recites quietly.

Varric turns to him, only to find him holding a small scrap of paper.

“What’s that?”

“It fell out of Cullen’s hand.”

“What does it say?”

“‘_The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor the garden its brightness_.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr 21.11.2018]


	3. Chapter 3

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Rotunda**

**11:50**

* * *

The sound of Cassandra’s boots beating against the ground is masked by Josephine, who lets out yet another bloodcurdling scream, sobbing into her hand and pushing out heavy breaths. Sera’s frozen, much like she had been when Anya had first been found dead, her eyes wide and glassy, almost like her soul has left her body entirely and gone off to a happier place.

_“Vishante Kaffas!”_

And there’s Dorian.

_“Vashedan!”_

And Iron Bull.

_“Fuck!”_

And right behind them, Charter.

Leliana, on the other hand, holds her tongue, regarding the scene with cool, focused eyes. The group walks in together through the rotunda’s southern door, which leads out to the ramparts, and with them, a brisk breeze dances over, causing Cullen to sway like a heavy chandelier.

“Where’s Cassandra?” Leliana asks, wasting no time.

“She went up to the rookery,” Varric offers, “to find the killer…” He trails off, eyes tracing over the people present in the room. Aside from Blackwall, everyone is gathered around the body… In that moment, Blackwall’s absence is painfully evident, and even more so considering the fact that none of the search parties seem to have found him anywhere.

Leliana places a hand on Charter’s shoulder and orders her to stay put and watch the body, and she proceeds to dash up the tower steps. Varric eyes Cole and quietly asks the same of him, getting a diligent nod in reply.

The staircase leading up to the library feels longer than it normally does, as the thoughts in Varric’s head race—nearly causing him to trip on the top step, managing to avoid face-planting into the ground by a mere hair. He makes his way to the second staircase without incident, barely even letting his eyes pass over the library.

It appears as though a tornado has torn through the rookery; tables are flipped over, papers are littered all over the floor and inkwells are shattered, giving the appearance of solid black blood pooling over the stonework. For the second time today, Varric remembers Bartrand—specifically how his house had looked when he and Hawke confronted him years ago—an image he can’t seem to get out of his head, even now.

Leliana and Varric find Cassandra standing over by the central railing, eyes to the ceiling, staring at a specific point in the metal latticework on the ceiling, and as they approach, it’s easy to see what it could be.

The rope by which Cullen is hanging is in the dead center of the lattice, kept up by what seems to be a large paperweight rather than simply being knotted around the metal, which solves the mystery of the loud clang they heard before Cullen’s body dropped; it must have been the paperweight slamming into the lattice. It also completely overrules suicide, if that had ever been a possibility. “There’s no way Cullen could have done this to himself…”

Leliana’s eyes curiously fall on Varric’s stout form. “Why not? I do not disagree that this could be murder, but we cannot rule out any possibility, no matter how difficult it may be to think about. This is a man whose wife has just been brutally murdered; the grief he must have been feeling is unimaginable.”

“Pretty roundabout way to off himself, isn’t it?” Varric argues. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to tie the rope on the railing and jump off? That is, _if_ it even is suicide. Besides, Cullen doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would just kill himself.”

“Perhaps,” Leliana concedes. “However, this railing is far too fragile to hold a man like Cullen. It would have snapped under his weight. The metal lattice is the only thing here that could hold him” She places her gloved hands against the wooden railing, wiggling it for good measure. “At any rate, I want our investigation to be as thorough as possible. We would be doing him a disservice to rule out completely viable possibilities.”

“If you say so…”

“I don’t understand,” Cassandra says, her voice raspy almost as though it’s coarse linen being tugged through a closed window.

“What don’t you understand?” Leliana almost seems impatient with her.

Cassandra then looks at Leliana, her eyes having lost that sharp edge they always seem to have—this isn’t the Cassandra that nearly knocked the teeth off of Varric a mere half hour ago; this is an imposter.

“There was nobody here. The moment he… he….” —she takes a deep breath— “I ran up as fast as I could—to the library first and then to the rookery. Nobody was there. Nobody could have been there. It’s impossible. I keep playing it back in my head. There were only two places the killer could have been: hiding in the rookery or hiding in the library. The only way to leave without being seen by Varric and the others on the bottom level is through the exit in the library—the one that leads to the veranda; otherwise, they would have to go through me. We both must have been running towards the library at the same time so they would not have had the time to run out of the library without alerting me, and they would not have been able to leave the rookery without alerting me. I had them cornered and yet they escaped anyway. It’s impossible, unless…”

_Unless he killed himself_, is probably what she wanted to say, and it seems that, like Varric, she doesn’t want to believe it.

“Varric,” she says quietly. “Which door did Leliana and the others arrive through?”

“The one leading out to the ramparts,” he replies.

“Then they could not have…” She cuts herself off with a long, exhausted sigh. Rubbing her face with her hands, she repeats the same defeated statement she’s been saying since they arrived, “No; it’s impossible.”

Varric quickly catches her meaning; the only people who could have hidden themselves from her in the shadows of the library were the rogues of their group: Varric, Sera, and Cole, who had been on the bottom level with Cassandra when Cullen’s body was dropped; and Leliana and Charter, who had been much too far from the scene to have done it and then escaped within the very limited time-frame estimated by Cassandra. There’s always Blackwall, who is still missing, but he is by far one of the least graceful people in the group, his steps are far too heavy, and he is unlikely to have done it.

“We need to find Blackwall,” Leliana states, leaning over the railing to look down at the rest of the group. “We did not find him outside of the castle, and I take it, your groups did not find him inside of the castle either.”

Cassandra shakes her head. “No, but… there is one place we did not search.” She gives Varric a meaningful side-glance.

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Basement**

**12:15**

* * *

It doesn’t take much coaxing to get the group to leave the heavy atmosphere of the rotunda and go into the muskier atmosphere of the castle basement; although a poorly disguised sense of mistrust leads Cole, Leliana, Charter, and the Iron Bull to stay behind with Cullen’s body—after all, a proper investigation hasn’t been conducted yet, and everyone wants a fair chance at the crime scene.

The dark, grimy aura of suspicion follows the group around like a fog, thick enough that they can taste it at the back of their throats when they breathe it in. Speaking of fog, however, as the group steps into the large hall and look upon the intricate tapestries that greet them each time they step into the basement, Varric can’t help but feel as though the stench has gotten considerably worse than the last time he had been in there.

As if to emphasize this very fact, Sera grumbles, “Eugh! It wasn’t this stinky here this morning, was it? Did we leave any meat out?”

“Not that I recall,” Varric replies.

Dorian raises his collar over his nose and winces almost as though he were in pain. “Are you quite certain? It smells like a slaughterhouse.”

Varric feels himself involuntarily flinch at the comparison as it brings up more memories of Hawke—namely the day they went looking for Hawke’s mother and found her… well, you know how that story ends. Somehow, whenever Varric encounters rotting meat, it’s never just a happy accident.

He looks up at the ceiling, almost expecting to see Blackwall drop down in the same manner as Cullen had earlier, but, of course, there’s nothing there. He keeps his jaw clenched in grim anticipation, nonetheless.

Josephine remains conspicuously silent, simply covering her nose with her hand and hovering close to Cassandra, who completely ignores the stench and leads on, marching headlong towards the kitchen.

“Does anyone else feel that sense of impending doom hanging over our heads or is that just me?” Varric asks, in a feeble attempt to alleviate his own mounting sense of anxiety; however it only succeeds in making him more anxious as he hears his voice echo against the walls of the silent room.

Cassandra passes through the door to the kitchen swiftly, scanning the area with her hawk-like eyes, and the rest of the group joins her in trying to check for anything out of the ordinary; the only things they find are used utensils left behind by Varric, Cole, Sera, and Charter from earlier that morning—though that peaceful morning feels like it happened weeks ago, not hours ago.

The kitchen doesn’t smell like bread anymore—then again, it doesn’t really smell like anything, and certainly not rotting meat. Sera, having overcome her initial apprehension, pushes ahead of everyone else and makes a beeline for the meat barrels.

“Sera, what-” Cassandra interjects as Sera yanks the lid off of one of the barrels and looks inside.

For a minute, Varric expects the worst, as his mind starts playing old murder mystery plot twists in his head—the body stored in the meat barrel so it wouldn’t leave a stench as it decomposes…

This time, though, they’re spared of this ridiculous cliche, as Sera pulls her head out of the barrel with a befuddled expression and says, “None of this meat’s gone rotten. The smell’s not coming from here.”

“Then where?” Cassandra replies.

“It was… stronger near the vault,” Josephine says softly.

And with that, the group turns around, moving together like the limbs of a slow horse, and makes their way back to the large hall with the decorative tapestries and the stench that somehow smells even worse than it did a few minutes ago—a mix of hyper-awareness shallowness of breath that Varric knows he’s not alone in. And he begins to wonder if everyone else has also reached the same conclusion about this basement.

It’s strange, but it feels like Anya’s eyes are undoubtedly on him right now—no, not just him, but all of them, as they shuffle across the room, diverging from each other like an army of ants scattering at the sight of a boot, as they all search a different corner of the hall for the source of the wretched scent.

Of course, Varric is a dwarf, so he’s not feeling the inquisitor’s undead gaze through some deep connection to the Fade or something like that, but it’s that same unsettling feeling she used to give him when she was alive. She had always been like a cat lurking in the corner of the room, predatory and silent as she watched everyone go about their business; maybe that’s why it always seemed so artificial to him when she would act out and try to get everyone’s attention on her—chances were, she would be attempting to hide something, like blood magic, or murder, or a pimple…

Varric is walking towards a tapestry on the far left of the hall when he feels his boot brush against something that doesn’t quite feel like stone. He drops to a crouch and pulls a small piece of paper from under his boot; it’s dirty and looks as though it’s been rolled and rerolled several times, but through the grime and dust, he can make out dark and elegant ink strokes.

_“Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?”_

He frowns, immediately remembering the scrap that had been in Cullen’s hand earlier, which read, _“The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor the garden its brightness.”_He pulls the scrap out and holds it out next to the one he had just found, but he finds that each of them has been written in a different handwriting, and although he can’t rule out that they’re related, they seem too odd to have been two sides of a correspondence. It could be a cipher, but it’s certainly not one he could possibly decipher.

Varric’s focus inadvertently shifts beyond the two scraps of paper he’s holding up to something metallic glinting in the light of the lantern, which he probably wouldn’t have noticed had he not been crouching. The object is obscured slightly by the fabric of the tapestry, which spills onto the ground like honey, making it slightly difficult to identify.

He carefully folds the scraps of paper and places them in his pocket before rushing over to the tapestry and reaching for the metallic object. The metal is a slender shaft longer than his arm and bent at an acute curve with leather padding on one end while the other end is attached to a hinge, connecting it to a leather socket; it doesn’t take long for him to realize that this is one of Anya’s legs, which had been conspicuously missing from her bedroom.

He lets out a long sigh before lifting the tapestry up just high enough to pass into the cavity behind it, which is definitely larger than he had expected it to be; although the thick tapestry is blocking most of the light, he can tell it’s at least as big as a supply closet—that, and the smell is _definitely_ coming from in there. The stench makes it hard to think and so he turns back into the main chamber, crawling out from under the tapestry.

He finds Cassandra curiously towering over him when he emerges; her arms are crossed and her eyes narrow when she spots the prosthetic limb in his hand. “Where did you find that?” she demands.

Varric doesn’t care much for her accusatory tone, but lets it slide for now (as if he could do anything about it otherwise) and offers the leg to her. “I found it behind that giant tapestry. There’s an entire room there, but it’s too dark to see inside.” He’d bet all of Kirkwall that Anya must have known about that room because it’s the first he’s heard of it, and, judging by the look on Cassandra’s face, the first she’s heard of it too.

Cassandra merely eyes the limb suspiciously but doesn’t make any move to grab it. Instead, she walks over to the far edge of the tapestry, tugging on the fabric hard enough to yank the rod holding it up out of place, taking the entire tapestry down with it with a loud clang. The sound is enough to get the attention of Josephine, Sera, and Dorian, who all run over.

And just as Varric’s eyes begin to focus on the contents of the small room behind the tapestry, the entire group hears a loud thump behind them. He turns, only to find that Josephine has dropped to the ground like a ragdoll, having completely lost all consciousness. He then turns his attention back to the room and doesn’t need to look too long to realize exactly what Josephine must have seen.

It looks like a grotesque painting, like the sort of gore and horror you’d find in a darkspawn camp in the deep roads. It looks like prey with its flesh barely hanging off of it in ribbony crimson webs. It’s… Well… It’s barely recognizable as human is what it is—or any race for that matter.

“What on earth…” Cassandra cries out, frozen in place, as though she can’t decide whether to back away or approach.

“Well, isn’t this delightful,” Dorian grumbles, looking more like someone encountering spilled ink rather than spilled blood. He rolls his eyes up and adjusts his collar to mask the stench again. “Another dead body.”

“It’s not him!” Sera interrupts him in a shrill voice that echoes harshly against the walls of the chamber, and faces away, as though refusing to look would make the sight go away. “It’s not him alright! It’s not!”

It’s not hard to figure out what she’s getting at. With everyone in Skyhold, both dead and alive, accounted for—these remains could only belong to one person. The one person who nobody has seen since that morning—Blackwall.

The muscles in Varric’s face feel loose and limp underneath his skin, and he finds himself completely without the energy or strength to emote. He can’t move the rest of his body either, completely entranced by the sight before him and the grim realization of what—or rather—_who_ he’s looking at.

In that one, all-encompassing moment of realization, all four of them turn their gaze to the bundle of limbs and ruffles that is Josephine, and Varric can’t help but wonder if she came to the same conclusion before passing out. It is Cassandra that picks her up gently, with one arm supporting her shoulders and the other hooked under her knees.

“W-We… We must get back to the others,” Cassandra orders them urgently, and she hears no complaints from Sera, Dorian, or Varric, who can’t leave the cellar soon enough now that they know the sinister origin of the rank stench. “We need to find whoever is responsible before they kill again.”

* * *

**4 Wintermarch 9:42 Dragon**

**Skyhold — Foyer**

**12:30**

* * *

As Varric’s group, led by Cassandra, emerges from the stairwell leading to the basement, they come face-to-face with two faces they hadn’t expected to see: Cole and Leliana, exiting from the stairwell on the other side of the hall—the one leading down into the undercroft.

Leliana’s eyes widen when she notices Josephine in Cassandra’s arms and she rushes over, leaving Cole to meekly attempt to catch up. “Josie!”

Cassandra frowns deeply and says, “She fainted.”

“Fainted?”

Varric can sense that Cassandra doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, so he takes over. “We—uhh—found Blackwall,” he tells her.

Leliana’s eyes narrow, but it’s clear that she can immediately tell what he means. “You found him?”

“At least, we think it was him,” he clarifies,

“What do you mean you _think_ it was him?”

“Maybe we should put Ruffles down somewhere and you can see for yourself if you’re so curious.”

“Where are Charter and Bull?” Dorian pipes up, his eyes passing over the closed door leading into the rotunda, where there is yet another dead body. “You didn’t take them with you?”

“Cole wanted to show me something in the armory,” Leliana replies, nodding in Cassandra’s direction. “So we left them in the rotunda.”

Cole nods and then shakes his hair out of his eyes. “The footprint doesn’t match her either.” He then adds, “It doesn’t match any of us. It’s small. Smaller than Sera and Dorian’s feet.”

“You sure about that, Kid?” Varric asks, earning a simple self-assured nod from him.

“What footprint?” Dorian says.

“Varric, Cole and I found it in the armory when we were looking for Blackwall,” Cassandra replies. “We never had a chance to tell anyone about it.”

“Yes, in light of the circumstances, I can’t imagine you would,” Dorian mumbles, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

Leliana gently strokes Josephine’s hair. “I will take her to her room. And someone should guard her in case the killer strikes while she is vulnerable, so I will stay by her side. Cassandra, I trust you will get to the bottom of this?”

Varric raises his brow. It strikes him as odd that Leliana wouldn’t want to examine Blackwall’s body for herself—then again, she likely expects Charter to pick up the slack; Charter is like an extension of Leliana, like a third arm. Whatever they discover when they head back down to the cellar, it’s likely that word will get back to Leliana through Charter so she doesn’t have to miss out on all the action.

Gently handing the diplomat to Leliana, Cassandra nods.

Sera is markedly silent, almost as though she’s completely lost her voice after her outburst in the basement, and Varric can’t blame her. Out of every member of the Inquisition, Sera had been closest to Anya and Blackwall, and now it looks like she’s lost both and with less than half a day between the two. It’s hard to tell what she must be thinking about, but she’s scarcely recognizable as the vibrant and animated woman she’s known to be. It’s as if all the color has been stripped from her being, both physically and spiritually; her face is pale and her lips look cold and lifeless. Even her eyes are dark and hollow, making it seem as though the entire experience has aged her up by nearly two decades.

Everything has been moving so fast from the moment they first found Anya, with not a moment spared to simply take it all in, and it’s clear that Sera can’t keep up—hell, nobody should be expected to keep up with that kind of crazy pace. Varric wants to say something that would lift her spirits, if even by a small margin, but what can you really do but let her mourn? “Hey, Buttercup?” he calls out gently. “Why don’t you go ahead and join Nightingale for a bit. We can take it from here.”

Sera seems to briefly consider objecting, but is too exhausted to commit to it. “Yeah. Fine,” she replies, turning on her heel and going after Leliana.

“Poor thing,” Dorian says in a hushed voice when she’s out of earshot. With the light from the window highlighting his moustache, several hairs appear out of place, contrary to his normally impeccable grooming. “This must be agony for her.”

Varric groans, rolling his tense neck and stretching his arms until they pop. “I think we could all use a vacation from this Maker damned vacation,” he grumbles.

Dorian snorts. “One more dead body, and I may have to ask whose wedding it is,” he quips, as the group walks across the hall towards the rotunda.

That even gets a sharp inhale from Cassandra—the most anyone ever really gets out of her, anyway. “You’re joking.”

“Ah, but you see, my dear Cassandra, you can’t really tell if I am or not. And that’s the real joke here,” he replies.

Varric simply gives Cole a paternal pat on the arm, relieved to be in his company again. They hadn’t been apart for long, but he can’t help but worry about the kid, especially when there’s a killer on the loose.

As they push the door to the rotunda open, Varric can’t help but feel the chill in the air, as though he were about to enter an empty room. Cassandra may even call it a sign from the Maker, but to Varric, it’s just a rotten gut feeling—the kind that overwhelms you all at once. It churns away at your guts until you can’t stand to breathe anymore. Varric just knows when he’s about to stumble upon a dead body.

It starts with a strangled gasp from Cassandra, followed by a shrill, “Amatus!” from Dorian.

Dwarves don’t have nightmares, but Varric reckons that this must be what a nightmare looks like. Charter is lying facedown on the ground, with her eyes rolled into the back of her head. The Iron Bull is unmoving, resting with his back against the wall, his head lolling forward and his arms limp at his sides. And of course, Cullen’s body continues to sway by a non-existent breeze, just the way they left it.

Cassandra drops to Charter’s side first, holding her fingers to the elf’s pale neck. She lingers longer than she needs to. “She… She doesn’t have a pulse!”

Dorian, on the other hand, is quietly whimpering into the Iron Bull’s chest. “No, please. Maker, no. This can’t be happening.”

Varric’s eyes pass over the two newest victims and he feels as though he’s being swept away by a wave, into the murky depths of an endless ocean. A leather glove tugs him by the shoulders out of the darkness and he inhales deeply. He regards this scene, still and wide-eyed. He can’t move his feet. His mind rushes to make sense of everything, but it’s all going too fast. His eyes jerk to Cole, who is quietly taking in the scene himself. He and Leliana… No, Cole couldn’t have done something like this. If Varric trusts anyone in this fucking castle, it’s Cole.

“They’ve been poisoned,” Cassandra declares, holding up a flask that had been on the ground beside Charter. “This ale, it’s laced with something strong. They died immediately.”

“Who? Who would do this?” Dorian asks, almost pleading.

For perhaps the first time today, Varric feels as though he’s running out of time. For the first time, he begins to wonder which one of them is next. And he hopes to the Maker, if the Maker’s even listening to them anymore, that neither he nor Cole will be next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr 20.12.2018]


End file.
